1990 Mustang LX - SVT Cobra DOHC Powered! UPDATE! 1/22/23

[Olskoolrodder]

This is gonna be sweet! Off to a great start  

[Scott8950]

18 hours ago, Tabbysdaddy said:

Not exactly. It has the wide Capri fenders and quarters but also the Mustang wheel flares.

Right it's a mixture of the 2. It's  fairly common for people to put mustang parts on the Capri because other than the wide fender and quarter panel It's the same car 😉

Edited November 24, 2021 by Scott8950

[Tuffy's Garage]

Very cool

[Tabbysdaddy]

1 hour ago, Scott8950 said:

Right it's a mixture of the 2. It's  fairly common for people to put mustang parts on the Capri because other than the wide fender and quarter panel It's the same car 😉

Yes, except that model doesn't look like either unless you welded the Mustang wheel lips on a Capri. 

[Scott8950]

2 minutes ago, Tabbysdaddy said:

Yes, except that model doesn't look like either unless you welded the Mustang wheel lips on a 

Yep

[Steve H]

On 11/21/2021 at 9:06 PM, Cool Hand said:

Yep, this is going to be well worth following. Liking what you have planned Dennis. 

Always impressed how you kit bash on your builds.

What Luke said…

Dennis, love how you approach your builds, very well thought out. You missed the 70’s and 80’s !! Your 1:1 looks awesome, and I have no doubt that this will be another educational build from you. Always learn something from your WIP’s. The mock-up stance looks perfect.

Cheers, Steve

[Dennis Lacy]

17 hours ago, Steve H said:

What Luke said…

Dennis, love how you approach your builds, very well thought out. You missed the 70’s and 80’s !! Your 1:1 looks awesome, and I have no doubt that this will be another educational build from you. Always learn something from your WIP’s. The mock-up stance looks perfect.

Cheers, Steve

Thanks, Steve! I’m not sure if the front will be quite as low as my mock up as there’s some limitations the way the front suspension is made. 
 

There’s probably only one vehicle from the 70’s I might actually see myself building and that’s a ‘77 Trans Am SE because Smoky & The Bandit is one of my favorite movies. Naturally, it wouldn’t be factory stock if I did… As for the 80’s, my 42nd birthday is next Friday and I have it on good authority that one of my kids picked me an ‘88 Mustang GT kit so if this one goes well I’ll have to dig into the GT. 

[Beamerman]

Very nice projekt...

BTW:

The Speedline Wheels with the Big and Little Tire combination is also available in the Shelby Series 1 Kit from Revell. The European Version #07039 is very cheap at Amaz.... at the moment. I bought a couple of these for the wheels and the 4,0L V8 Engine which is also very nice...

 

Cheers!

[Rocking Rodney Rat]

Nice looking build. I had a '90 Mustang GT that I had bolted on a bunch of go-fast goodies...I eventually rolled it. -RRR

[Dennis Lacy]

On 11/26/2021 at 4:29 AM, Rocking Rodney Rat said:

Nice looking build. I had a '90 Mustang GT that I had bolted on a bunch of go-fast goodies...I eventually rolled it. -RRR

I remember you telling me that story. I’m sure it was fun while it lasted!

[Dennis Lacy]

UPDATE!

Yesterday I spent some quality time at the bench.  The way this kit is made has the floor pan, front frame rails and lower core support as one piece and then the engine bay side panels, upper core support and interior floor as another. Now the full size car is a unibody so the frame rails and engine bay are not separate, they are a constructed unit. The thing I don’t like about the way the kit has them separate is it leaves the frame rails flimsy and also without any positive locating tabs at the front it makes keeping the rails and bay together and aligned a pain.

After studying the situation for a bit I found no reason why these two big pieces can’t be permanently joined now to make life easier during construction. It just means a bit of masking when I eventually get to painting. I’d rather deal with masking later than clumsy separate pieces now. The only thing is that when you place the two parts together there is a gap between the frame rails and bottom of the engine bay walls. If you push them together they will touch at the front but still leave a wedge shaped gap. There’s also a gap at the back edge where the frame rails should butt against the lower part of the firewall. 
 

 

To remedy this I added strips of .010” Evergreen to the tops and back sides of the frame rails. The excess was trimmed and sanded flush and then the floor/frame rails piece was permanently joined to the engine bay walls/interior floor piece. Now the chassis has some sturdy structure to work with. 
 

 

Moving on, the next thing was to figure out how to lower the front of the car. After mocking up the tubular k-member and struts I realized I only needed to get a 1/16” drop to have the little bit of tire tuck I want. After some staring and thinking I realized I could cut the “spindle” area off just below the raised D-shaped registers for the brakes then cut the “spindles” off at their base from the unused stock k-member piece, graft those pieces onto the tube k-member and create a set of “dropped spindles” which actually do exist in the aftermarket for these cars.  I added some support strips to the backside to strengthen the graft. I’ll clean those areas up some more later. 

Tube k-member left and stock k-member right. See the pencil cut lines on each:
 

 

Modified “dropped spindle” and tube k-member on the left, Unmodified “spindle” and tube k-member on the right:

 

Support strips on back side of modified “dropped spindles”: 

 

For use with the tube k-member the kit gives a set of front struts rendered with coil over springs. With the “spindles” made taller it means that the struts are too long. I shortened them the necessary amount and inserted .040” rod into the tops. The kit has these locate inside 2 shallow circles up in the bottom of the strut towers but it’s not a positive locating fit so I drilled shallow holes for the pins that I added to the struts to register in (circled in red.)
 

Here is the left front held together. With the struts pinned this is now a sturdy assembly.

And here is the resultant tire tuck with the wheel lined up on center. Just right!

The last thing I accomplished yesterday was building some front motor mounts to hold the engine in proper location. These are not prototypical (that would be a big undertaking) but they get the job done and sit on the mount pads of the tube k-member. In the end I will paint these so that they look like something.

 

Thats all for now. Next I will move on to the rear axle and suspension and determine if the rear stance needs to be lowered. After that I’ll address adapting the wheels and a rear disc brake conversion. Stay tuned!

[Smoke Wagon]

Your Modular engine swap and other modifications are coming along great.

Sorry if I stepped on your toes by doing a WIP of the same kit at the same time, I should’ve checked beforehand. 

[Dennis Lacy]

33 minutes ago, Smoke Wagon said:

Your Modular engine swap and other modifications are coming along great.

Sorry if I stepped on your toes by doing a WIP of the same kit at the same time, I should’ve checked beforehand. 

Thanks! And no worries. It will be fun having a side by side build going on based on the same kit. 

[Smoke Wagon]

Right on  The more scale Foxes the merrier, eh? 

[afx]

Great looking project Dennis.

[Rocking Rodney Rat]

ADL- you're on a tear with these late model (post '48) builds. Glad to see you got some quality bench time! -RRR

[Dennis Lacy]

7 hours ago, Rocking Rodney Rat said:

ADL- you're on a tear with these late model (post '48) builds. Glad to see you got some quality bench time! -RRR

It totally wasn’t planned, either. I have a strong feeling that after this Mustang I’m gonna need to do a bread and butter hot rod project. 

[Olskoolrodder]

Stance is looking good from that pic, that engine is gonna be sweet (nicely done on the sub frame work)  

 

[Dennis Lacy]

On 11/30/2021 at 7:14 PM, Olskoolrodder said:

Stance is looking good from that pic, that engine is gonna be sweet (nicely done on the sub frame work)  

 

Thanks! I always thought the Cobra engine swaps were really cool back when they were a new yet fairly uncommon thing in the late 90’s. Nowadays every other one of these Mustang’s are getting later model engine swaps, in particular the 5-liter Coyote engines. To me, it’s honestly getting kinda boring…

[Mr. Metallic]

Dennis, it's cool to see you tackle this much maligned kit. I didn't follow along at all during the ugliness that surrounded the introduction of this kit. But I had heard that it was "chopped". Then i saw this kit on the shelf at HL awhile back and wondered what it actually looked like, and if it could be made into a modern hot rod. You are showing that it can be done. Now I might have to buy one when I have some scratch after Christmas on their 40% off sale (also heavily eyeballing the 83 Olds kit for a pro-street build). You've got my wheels turning.

[Dennis Lacy]

23 minutes ago, Mr. Metallic said:

Dennis, it's cool to see you tackle this much maligned kit. I didn't follow along at all during the ugliness that surrounded the introduction of this kit. But I had heard that it was "chopped". Then i saw this kit on the shelf at HL awhile back and wondered what it actually looked like, and if it could be made into a modern hot rod. You are showing that it can be done. Now I might have to buy one when I have some scratch after Christmas on their 40% off sale (also heavily eyeballing the 83 Olds kit for a pro-street build). You've got my wheels turning.

Thanks, Craig! The major issue is that the greenhouse is several scale inches too short, and there’s no argument there. I forget how many years ago the original issue came out which only had factory stock and SSP (Highway Patrol) goodies but it’s taken me all this time to warm up to building one. One of the other issues is that the radius of the rear wheel openings is enlarged. They did this because of the drag race version but unfortunately with there being just one body tool then we are stuck with it for any version we might build unless major corrective work was done. I’ve decided to just roll with the inaccuracies because in the end it will still look like a Mustang and I think I can pull off a pretty cool take on it. One things for sure, despite the body many other aspects of the kit are very well done and if anything could serve to improve some of the other Fox Body Mustang kits that have been around for decades. 

[Smoke Wagon]

4 hours ago, Dennis Lacy said:

Nowadays every other one of these Mustang’s are getting later model engine swaps, in particular the 5-liter Coyote engines. To me, it’s honestly getting kinda boring…

I saw a video of an LX notch that got a 2.3 Ecoboost I4 swapped in from a new Mustang. I thought it was a pretty interesting idea, and it was executed nicely too. The car in particular was a dark yellow I believe.

[Dennis Lacy]

4 hours ago, Smoke Wagon said:

I saw a video of an LX notch that got a 2.3 Ecoboost I4 swapped in from a new Mustang. I thought it was a pretty interesting idea, and it was executed nicely too. The car in particular was a dark yellow I believe.

I can appreciate the idea and workmanship if it was done cleanly BUT that doesn’t excite me in the slightest. My neighbor has a 2020 Ecoboost Mustang with cat-less exhaust and other mods. It may be fast but it’s one of the worst and obnoxious sounding cars I’ve ever heard! 🤣

[Smoke Wagon]

Hehe. The new base models are kind of like the SVO in regards to the powertrain, however it is hard to get a 4 banger to sound good IMO. No matter what you do to improve on it, it it’s still gonna sound like the family dog had gotten into some Rosarita’s refried beans. They’re just fine for a commuter though.

[mustang1989]

Nice mods to allow for that engine. I like the looks of this build so far.